Jean Metauten
My name is Jean Metauten. I am a senior in Macaulay Honors College at The City College of New York. I major in Jewish Studies and minor in English. For my honors thesis, I intend to research the relationship between the landscape of New York City and the practice of Judaism in several novels by three Jewish authors.
***I have come to my senior thesis with a lifelong love for literature. Ever since I could read on my own, I devoured books, beginning with the Babysitters’ Club series. Even before I could write on my own, I was developing and illustrating short children’s books – the oldest being The Girl Who Put the Shovel on the Cat’s Head. Every summer, I used to go to the library, take out about 7 books, and read them quickly, return, repeat.
***My passion for Jewish Studies blossomed early in my college career. The first course I took was Jewish Humor in Film, and I had not yet declared a major. The material was fascinating, and I could not help wanting to learn more. Learning the basics in Jewish Life and Religion made me feel closer to Jewish people, and Jewish Life in New York was the sprout of my thesis project. I loved learning about the experience of Jewish people in New York, and when it came time to brainstorm thesis ideas, only one stood out: I had to meld my loves for literature and Jewish experience.
***To connect with the readers of my thesis, I imagine them in the role of scholars who want to read an academically mindful piece with evidence. I imagine that my role is to help them understand my topic better – that is, to understand the relationship between New York City and the practice of Judaism better. I assume that they do not see this problem as I do, do not have as much specialized training in Jewish Studies as I do, and that I need to defend my topic and why it matters. I will make sure to show all the steps that helped me reach my conclusion for credibility to the readers and accuracy.
***Some questions I strive to answer include:
1. When did Jewish authors begin to write about experiences in New York City? How popular were these books at the time they were written? Who read these books?
2. What is the significance of New York-centered novels in the Jewish canon, as compared to novels set in other geographic areas?
3. How do Jewish novels set in New York reflect the economical, social, political standpoints of the Jewish community at the time?
4. Which are they key elements common to each of the stories? Which elements are common in stories in other locations?
5. What are the different stories told by Jewish New Yorkers in novels? Are there common characters?
6. How are Jewish novels set in New York similar to other ethnic or immigrant novels set in New York? How are they different?
7. Who is not represented in a novel set in New York about Jews? Who is not a main character, but a supporting character? Who does not benefit from the writing of these stories?
8. How would Jewish society be different if no one wrote novels about his/her experiences in New York City? How would Jewish society be different today? Would Jews be more or less assimilated if they did not have these stories?
***I hope to narrow these questions into a few key questions that will guide the research and writing of my thesis.
September 22nd, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Jean,
It’s great to see your enthusiasm for your topic and reading in general. Now that you have narrowed your general topic to Jewish novels set in New York City, it will be important to define what constitutes a Jewish novel. Is it one written by a Jewish author necessarily or would you include a non-Jewish author if the novel itself had a focus on NYC and Jewish lives? The time-frame for these novels will be another issue to decide on and why. From the exercise we did in class, I think that your third line is the one that is most fruitful for you to work with: “the relationship between loyalty to Jewish traditions an pressure to assimilate to city life.” This is a likely theme, one that is a key to Anzia Yeszierska’s Breadgivers, for example.
What I want to caution you about is trying to focus on how this fiction impacts Judaism itself. That would be a sociological study very different from the one I think you want to undertake. That said, I can see a place for reviews of a given novel that would speculate on its effect for Jewish readers or state a personal response as a Jewish reader—but in each case, you would use such evidence as reviews of the novel rather than a revelation about impact on Jewish readers. The reason I am saying this is that, as I understand it, you are planning a literary analysis. That means that you will be looking at the role New York City plays within the context of these novels. This would allow a comparison/contrast between different authors and novels because the conflict and tensions between the characters and the city would differ (possibly by gender and degrees of conservatism.
Look again at your list of questions and ask yourself which ones are answerable and which ones are not (for example, “Who does not benefit from the writings of these stories” is unanswerable).